The present invention generally relates to a chorus effect attaching apparatus for use in a karaoke apparatus.
Various karaoke apparatuses have been proposed. In one type of the karaoke apparatuses, a chorus sound is generated by performing pitch conversion (processing for raising or lowering a scale) on a singing voice (hereafter, referred to as a vocal sound) inputted from a microphone so as to attach the generated chorus sound to the vocal sound.
Meanwhile, to perform an agreeable chorus, it is basically important to generate a chorus sound at a proper pitch concordant with a vocal sound. It is more important, however, to simulate a natural chorus sound actually uttered by a human being for the agreeable chorus performance. From this point of view, the following explains an actually uttered human voice (or a natural voice). The pitch of a natural voice is always fluctuating. This pitch fluctuation mostly contributes to "naturalness" of the actual human voice. In the above-mentioned conventional karaoke apparatuses, the chorus sounds are generated with a pitch strictly designated by harmony pitch information, or with a fixed pitch that does not fluctuates, thereby inevitably resulting in an artificial chorus sound that sounds synthetic or unnatural to the ear.